Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Friday. Again [views]

How in the world some long-forgotten German frigged up "dies Veneris" to make the word sound like "Friday" beats me. But she did. Or he. So "Friday" it is. El Viernes. Sixth day of the week, fifth workday. First day of the weekend. Ajúa! Here at work everyone gets all cheerful on Friday, especially those alternate Fridays when we get our pay.

Pero sabes qué? That whole hullabaloo about how cool Friday is? Puro talk, no walk. I mean, look how many cool things have been said about other days of the week. Sunday? "Never on Sunday." Monday? A chingo of songs, like "Stormy Monday", "Blue Monday", and the ever redundant "Monday, Monday". "Ash Wednesday"! Wow, what a poem.

But pobrecito Friday. Our culture has sadly paid only lip service to Friday.

Mira, popular culture has a couple of fictive Fridays that ain't worth squat. Joe Friday, played by Jack Webb, formed a pop culture cop icon in the 60s, then qué lástima, Dan Ackroyd mucked up Joe Friday. Way, back in the 19th Century, buey, Robinson Crusoe had a slave named Friday. A slave!

Is there a poem for Friday? A raison d'etre for Friday? A Friday spell-out? A Friday joke? A ver.

Raison d'etre for Friday. No, that's wrong, but only because of a missing circumflex. Fortunately, weekends are diacritic free. If you're reading this during the week, sorry. Why is there no Viernes Gigante, or a Siempre en Viernes to look forward to all week?

Friday spell out. Give me an "F"! Give me a...OK, don't do a Country Joe on me. Let's do a sentimental one. All together now...F is for the first night of the weekend, R is for the romance that it holds, I is for ... yuck, this sucks.

Friday joke. Why do football players' shoes have "TGIF" painted on them? To remind them, "toes go in first". Rimshot. That might be only Denver players. What would I know, except thank the goddess Frigge Los Angeles doesn't have the NFL.

Maybe there's a poem for Friday. Know a good one? Donne or Herbert's "Good Friday", in fact all the Good Friday Friday poems, are terrible. Bitter irony there are no good Good Friday Friday poems.

A spectre is haunting the EUA, the spectre of dissing Friday. What a revoltin' development this turned out to be.